“Gather, gather. Come now, hush, my brothers and sisters. Rest with me a moment from this merrymaking. My old knees can’t take it. Sit here with me a while, until I catch my breath, and allow me, in the meantime, to let you in on a little secret.

Let me tell you how a story that has been told to you since you were gathered up restless in your Mother’s lap, around this very same fire, was only, in fact, half the story.

You see, you know all the stories of how we came to be, after time and space had begun their journey towards forever. When Danu’s tears created the ocean, pushing their heavy and sorrowful load through rocks, creating rivers, then drying to form the dark layer of mud upon which the trees grew.

Where before there had been only eternal silence, Danu’s tears brought with them the three first sounds of the universe; the Goltraige, the Gentraige, and the Súantraige, or as we call them, the Buille Croí Danu; Danu’s heartbeat.

You are familiar with the story of how the Gods then came to be, of the Tuatha Dé Danann and the others, of course, but there is a corner of this story that you have not yet visited. You see, the Buille Croí Danu is very much, well, the heartbeat of the universe itself. What many of you don’t realise is that we still feel it to this very day, and that it shapes every one of us. It sits right here, within us all.

Some folks think the Buille Croí Danu is the ancient beat played on the drums at dawn, or the sweet vibrating song of the dreoilín bird. Some believe it is the murmur you hear just before the very first thunderclap, or the thuds of raindrops on the leaves. But my friends, they are all wrong. The Buille Croí Danu isn’t a beat or song at all, it is more of a… a pulse.

-Don’t look so shocked, Aine, you’ll learn by the time you’re an old wrinkle like me, that every story has hidden doors.-

I want you all to place your finger here, right here on your wrist. The slighter of you…

-I’m not looking at you, Cathal…-

The slighter of you, and the more sensitive of you, may find those purple roots of yours a little closer to the surface than others, but you will all feel it. Now sit there a moment, eyes closed, can you feel it? Sometimes you can sense it in your head; woosh, woosh, woosh.

-I know Myrna, you have felt it in the blush of your face when you were seen walking in the field with the shepherd’s lad… Oh, come now dear girl, I’m only jesting with you.-

That swsh, swsh, swsh just under your finger there, that my friends, is the Buille Croí Danu, the rise and fall of Danu’s ocean of tears, its pulse, inside all of us.

-Oh goodness, look at the little ones’ excitement! Yes, yes, children, the tears of Danu herself are in all of you.-

You see, when Danu gave birth to the Tuatha Dé Danann, it was an experience of pain the likes of which the universe had never seen. Many do not know, but it is why she temporarily transformed into Bilé, the sacred tree, to escape her cries and breith aches.

-Just like your own, Mother Grainne… I remember it well. You trying to heave that giant from within you for days and days! Look at him now, barely leaves your chest, poor woman!-

On that day, Danu promised that her suffering would not be in vain, that the Buille Croí Danu that had accompanied her would be her gift to the world.

Now, to do this, she needed to find ways to share the pulse of the Buille Croí Danu through the Mothers. As we know, everything starts and ends with them. She chose four ways. The kin-sac, the Mother’s skin, a babe’s cries, and the fourth, well, I’ll come to that.

The plum red kin-sac, heaving and sighing alongside the babe in its Mothers’ belly. When it arrives, you can see the hundreds of blue courses encased within it. The Gods give the kin-sac a sacred and ancient task to accompany the babe before their arrival, the courses pulsing life into the little páiste. It’s how our spirit enters us.

One course was put there by Danu herself, the deepest and bluest of them all. The pulse of the ocean of tears pushes towards the babe and back towards the Mother through that course, over and over.

-Just as we see the water come as far up to your place, Mother Brigit. The same way the sea kisses the stones with its frothy orange foam from the violent stir of sand it pulls along in that bay, then how it heads back out under the yellow moon.-

The kin-sac, the twin spirit, as we know it, is its conduit. The Buille Croí Danu rides along that current, from the moment the spirit reaches the Mother’s belly, a dance to and fro between them. Swsh, swsh, swsh back and forth back and forth, full of histories, stories, and stars.

It settles in every corner of them both for the rest of their lives. That’s what you can feel pushing through your purple roots just there.

Did you ever notice how a babe softens and curls out when at his mother’s skin? Well, this is another way the Buille Croí Danu was made to pass, another dance between kin. When held at the breast, or in the lap, or on the back of their Mother, tiny sparks, just like the ones in the sky when there is a storm, dance on the babe’s skin, lifting their breith hairs up to the skies.

-Don’t be frightened, my dears, it doesn’t hurt. It is just another one of Danu’s gifts to us.-

The babe’s cry, which makes a Mother’s milk come, as well as the milk of other Mothers nearby, also holds within it the Buille Croí Danu. Tears creating tears. If you listen closely to those cries, you can hear rivers of Danu’s tears crashing through rocks.

And that brings us to the fourth. Danu’s final gift.

When the before people roamed, before they burnt the sky and blackened the seas, they spent much of their time here wondering about this fourth gift. What connects us? How do we feel each other? They got it so, so wrong, my brothers and sisters.

-Who remembers the stories of before? Yes Aine, the before people, it frightens us to think about it, I know, but we must, so as not to repeat their mistakes.-

They tried to imitate nature, and in the process, destroyed it. They harnessed the buzz of bees to power the machines that made artificial honey, killing the beautiful creatures off eventually. They grew chicks just to dispose of them the minute they burst out of their shells, still warm from the lights that replaced their Mothers, so they could use the eggs to recreate the beaches they had disfigured.

How could we ever expect them to understand this fourth gift from Danu? They with their grey mountains made of steel and children suffering, men placing each other on the end of spik…

-Oh my, I forgot my audience, it’s ok children, that is all long gone now.-

You see the before people couldn’t see them, our Loinnirs. Our light strings, as the little ones call them.

Only a handful of them could even feel them; they were the artists and the healers of before. This fourth way is how the Buille Croí Danu flows between us all.

That the before people couldn’t see them or feel them is exactly why the Gods began to show them to us. They did not see the flow of our Loinnirs from plant to person, from mouse to mountain. Can you imagine not being able to see them? The bright white throbbing lines between each and every one of us. Not knowing how every move we make vibrates to everything else? Well, that is why the before people, when the start of the dark…

-I’m forgetting my audience again, my apologies, let me continue…-

The Buille Croí Danu, that ancient pulse, the sounds from the depths of the ocean of Danu’s tears, runs between us through our Loinnirs. The strongest of them vibrates straight from our Mothers to us, and in turn back to our Mothers.

-Yes Ainne, hold yours up for all to see, the one there connecting you and your Mother, it’s so beautiful, thank you. –

And that, my brothers and sisters, was Danu’s final gift. Danu’s tears charging the light in our Loinnirs.

And my friends, with that, I am needed, see my Loinnir is vibrating, let us take leave.”

Mari-Claire Price

Mari-Claire Price calls the beautiful coast of Ayrshire, Scotland home. She recently traded her human rights career for the most important job of all; being mum. She fits writing words into the corners of beautiful days with her son, husband, 5 dogs, and 2 cats.